Dr Viper's Girl
by NebulousMistress
Summary: A What-If spun from events in "Mutation City". Not for the faint of heart. To be updated sporadically.
1. Chapter 1

The first time I saw the episode _Mutation City_ I fell in love. Not with an individual or a plot or setting but with an idea, an image that graced my teenage mind. That was 17 years ago. That idea has been refined, expanded, altered, forgotten, relearned, abused, but never written. I never considered it serious enough of an idea to appeal to others.

And then last year I stumbled across Ulyferal and his thoroughly awesome expansions on Commander Feral. And realized my idea wasn't all that weird after all.

So I'm biting the bullet. Be gentle. This has been worked on for 17 years, more than half my life. It's not light. It's also not short. And it the characters aren't even mine.

Episode dialogue lifted from the episode.

-00000-

I am Dr. Viper's greatest creation.

True, every one of his creations are his "latest and greatest". His plantimals are truly amazing. But I am far and above even his idea for a living and breathing Megakat Tower.

I am sentient and sapient. I should hope so, I started this way. I was not an innocent bystander by far but I… Let's just say that I got in his way.

My mutation was an accident but that doesn't make me anything less than his greatest creation. I am beautiful. I am loyal. I am a work of art.

I am a monster.

And not a day goes by when I do not thank the stars for him making me so.

-00000-

"Megakat Biochemical, eight miles and closing," I said. My uncle sat at my side in the chopper as I flew, barking orders to our escort. They were allowed to return to base after being hit, acid eating into their rotor axles.

Megakat City was a wasteland under us. The streets were filled with unknown depths of goo, crawling with mutant creations of Dr. Viper. Katalyst X63 was potent indeed to be taking small animals, frogs and lizards, and turning them into the creatures infesting our city. It was almost painful to see, this city we as Enforcers were sworn to protect, reclaimed by the monsters Dr. Viper saw as "natural". I took great relish in shooting grasping tendrils into bits.

"Guess it's up to us now," I said. I shouldn't have said it.

A helicopter doesn't have the responses of a fixed wing aircraft. We lurched as something grabbed us by the tail; I shut down the engine so we wouldn't spin out and die when our stabilizing fins were torn off.

"We're going down!" I shouted. It was a pointless waste of words as our tail gave way and we spun into the muck.

"This is Feral, bring me chopper back-aiieee!" My uncle tried the radio but the cockpit hull melted around us and he screamed while getting out of the way.

I pulled my pistol. One of the mutant… things… came towards us. I fired at it but then its tongue grabbed my gun and ate it. We did the only thing we could do. We climbed to the roof of the wrecked chopper and my uncle pulled his sidearm.

The SWAT Kats came to our aid. Clearly they didn't expect the mutants either as their jet was pulled down into the flood. The wave from their splash washed us in.

The SWAT Kats were gone, submerged under this… goo. My uncle and I swam to the nearest building. We hung onto some poor kat's sixth floor window ledge and hoped.

Weird orange slime oozed through my clothes. It was like being encased in jell-o. It was warm, which disturbed me on some level. I could feel the tiny things squirming around in it. I could also feel the breath of the giant maw behind us. Whatever it had been it was now little more than mouth attached to a tail. It arched up out of the slime like a water snake, maybe that's what it had been. It was so far mutated I don't think it even had eyes anymore. Uncle's sidearm was useless now, clogged with gunk. He threw it at the thing.

The Turbokat burst out of the goo; the SWAT Kats had survived. I shouted to them and hoped they'd get to us before the thing did. I felt a stabbing pain in my back as I reached up and waved them down but ignored it. Pain wasn't important, getting us out of there was.

They shot a net at us. It pulled us out of the slime right as the thing leaped. It missed us and the Turbokat carted us away.

I pulled a foot-long winged eel-worm… thing… out of my fatigues and dropped it into the slime below.

"Are you injured?" Uncle asked.

I scratched at where I found the thing. It hurt like touching a wound and there was blood on my fingers. "Worm bit me," I admitted. "I'll be okay."

"Let me look," he ordered. I could tell it was an order. He lifted my shirt and winced.

"That bad?" I asked. His look worried me.

"Looks painful," he admitted. "You should be fine. When we get back I'm having a medic take a look at you."

I tugged my shirt back down and hissed as fabric touched the open bite. "Sounds like a good idea," I agreed.

The SWAT Kats set us down on the tarmac. Technicians ran up to get us out of this net as the tow cable was detached and the Turbokat took off to do our jobs for us.

My back itched like burrs. Uncle called for a medic for my bite while I found myself absently scratching at it. He took me inside, away from prying eyes. I purred at him for it and felt him purr back.

In Uncle's office a field medic had my shirt off and was scratching his head at my bite. He said something about it looking festered. I remember Uncle radioing for Dr. Conway to come up from the biotech lab when everything happened at once.

The medic shrieked and scampered off. He hissed, his ears back.

Uncle ran up to me, I could feel his arms around me. I heard him purring to me as he shouted for Dr. Conway.

I wondered why I was on the floor. I wondered why my back was on fire. There was agony and the sound of fabric and flesh ripping. Someone was screaming. I think it was me.

And then I didn't think anymore.

I knew I was inside. I was trapped. And I knew where I was meant to be. I knew where I needed to be.

And then I was there.


	2. Chapter 2

No I haven't abandoned this. As this is an idea I've been writing on for so long I keep throwing out bits, scenes, whole chapters, and then starting over in disgust. The process takes awhile. Here's to the long haul, eh? ::raises drink::

-00000-

I was free.

And I was falling thirty stories. At that height water feels like concrete. Instinct drove me to open limbs I didn't have before, to tighten muscles that by all rights shouldn't have been there. I flapped clumsily and felt bones creak under the strain before I broke free of gravity's shackles.

Sort of.

I careened through streets and between buildings. Mutant plants reached for me but I was too fast, had too much speed built up from my initial fall. I flapped large wings, long and thin, avoided the monsters that leaped at me like fish trying to catch a fly.

Left. Left. Right. Left. I knew these streets like the back of my hand, had flown them in choppers but never like _this_…

A giant flying thing passed over my head. I turned and tried to follow it; there was something familiar about the great black dragon that spat fire out of its tail. But its fires were going out and it was caught by a giant… thing.

And then the mists came. And I realized a 300 foot tall Dr. Viper had just caught the Turbokat and the antimutagens had gone airborne.

The surface was two hundred feet below me.

I pulled my wings in and dove, even as I felt an itchy prickle spread across my skin. I opened my wings at the base of my dive, tried to fly below the level of the mist. I was going too fast, way too fast to survive impact with the surface. My wings burned with exertion and something I feared much more.

Injury be damned I threw myself under the surface of the swamp. My front screamed in an entirely new pain, the sting of high-speed impact, but at least the prickling stopped. I tried to swim, ended up waving my arms uselessly before spreading my wings and flying through the slime like a penguin through water.

There! An open window below the waterline. I chanced it, found some unlucky kat's apartment. I checked the closet…

Score! I breached the air bubble at the ceiling and took a deep breath of untainted air.

"Physical assessment," I mumbled to no one. I checked myself over. My front stung with impact bruises. My flight suit was gone, torn out at the tail and all down the back. My tail felt normal now, furry and everything, a sharp contrast to the longer tail I'd been using for attitude control. My wings were still there, anchored at the middle of my spine. They were bat-like with short sleek fur on the leading edge. I estimated a wingspan of at least 18 feet.

In general my fur seemed sleeker, less fluffy. It made sense; if I was going to be flying I needed to reduce drag and I did not even want to entertain the idea of shaving off all my fur.

My air bubble started getting bigger. The flood was receding, the orange goo flowing,,, somewhere. I didn't want to know where. I waded out to the bedroom and closed the window, wary of any more of that purple mist coming for me before I knew whether or not I could fly.

"I'm not giving this up," I said, surprising myself. I didn't know I was making this decision. I sat down on the sodden bed, ignoring the slime that welled out of the mattress. I watched the level of goo fall until it bottomed out as an ankle-deep layer of ick on the floor. The level kept falling outside, probably leaving similar layers of ooze on their floors.

I started laughing. "Enforcer Headquarters is gonna be a mess," I said, giggling in absurdity. Absurdity turned to hysterics which petered out while I laid on some unknown kat's ruined bed in a destroyed apartment.

I didn't even know if I could still fly, I was hiding from the one thing that could make me normal again, and I'd just had the most exhilarating experience of my life. I was exhausted, I was realizing I would never be able to fly a jet again, and I wasn't even sure my wings could support my weight after what the antimutagens did to me.

I couldn't deal with this at that moment. All I wanted to do was rest my eyes…

The next thing I knew hands were shaking me. Rough hands shook me then jumped back to, I dunno, make sure I didn't bite or something. I opened my eyes to glare at the owner of those hands.

"Sergeant," I warned.

"Name, rank," the tom asked. Some beat-cop named Tanner or something.

I rattled off my name and rank then answered how many fingers he was holding up, all the questions we're supposed to ask an Enforcer if we fear they might be mentally compromised in the field. I sighed and submitted to procedure. I hate procedure. There are days, like the one previous, where I recognize how necessary procedure really is but that doesn't mean I can't hate it with a passion.

The street level was a mess. That same ankle-deep layer of goo inside the buildings was present on every horizontal surface outside. I winced as I thought of the amount the city would be paying out for insurance claims and cleanup. Tanner held the rear door of his patrol car open. I noted the unsure look on his face, the snow chains tied around his car's tires, the fact that he was trying to get me to sit in the back like some perp.

"Cleanup duty?" I asked.

"Tenant called in a monster sleeping in his bed," Tanner replied. "Everyone we've got is on the street answering calls like this. The antimutagen plan didn't work so well."

"Mutants left in corners?" This interested me.

Tanner shrugged. "Half-mutated things dead from the stress, some monsters just didn't get a big enough dose, someone's house plant tried to eat them. Man, I used to get scared by this crud, now I don't feel a damned thing."

Tanner's radio started shouting. He started arguing with the dispatcher, something about a mobile plant chasing people in the park. Taking me back to Enforcer Headquarters was an inconvenience, one that was costing time and possibly lives.

"Go," I told Tanner. "I can make it back to Headquarters by myself.

"Procedure says any potentially compromised Enforcer requires an escort to medical treatment."

I looked up and found what I needed. I pointed to a chopper overhead, its course taking it back to Headquarters. "That counts," I said.

Tanner looked unimpressed.

I spread my wings, just enough for them to be un-ignorable. "I need to know if I can still fly," I said. "Please."

Tanner looked at me like I was nuts before he just closed off. "Whatever," he said, getting into his patrol car.

Poor kat, I thought. I hoped I would never get that jaded. I spread my wings and ran, flapping like mad.

Despite the inches of slimy cover the ground was not soft. I fell on my face, shook myself off, and tried again. And again. Fear gripped my heart as pain spread though overworked muscles. I tried once more…

A gust of headwind threw me into the air. I angled my wings to take it and flapped, clawed my way into the air. It was much harder than the night before as my anatomy worked against me this time. I turned into the seabreeze and let it carry me into the sky.

I turned toward Headquarters. I was ready for that night to be over.


End file.
